What is the Best Way to Increase Shopify Conversion Rates?

This is one of the most commonly asked questions in Shopify forums, and for good reason. When a store increases its conversion rates it automatically increases profits.

It’s one of the hardest questions to answer. Here’s why there’s no easy answer to this question and what to do about it. You’ll learn that:

There are no silver bullets when it comes to increasing conversion rates. You need to find your own way if you want to improve them.

There’s a method you can use to find it. It’s called High Tempo Testing and it’s done in five easy steps.

Plus, a list of ideas from Shopify experts you can test using the High Tempo Testing method.

We found 88 different answers to the question of how to increase Conversion Rate online, coming from different Shopify experts, developers and entrepreneurs (read the list below).

No one is able to give a satisfactory, straight-up answer because there isn’t one. It depends on your store, your market, your products and your brand (If you don’t know your Conversion Rate, calculate it by signing up to Compass for free).

Every company is different. Even if you’re selling a product that is also sold by other stores, you have your own unique brand and voice. The best-converting stores use that voice to increase conversions.

If you’re copying what other people are doing, you’re already one step behind. Consumers tire of generic marketing tricks quickly. They want to see something unique.

High Tempo Testing

Finding the tactic (or tactics) that are unique to your store is not as hard as it seems. All you need to do is follow a process called High Tempo Testing.

High Tempo Testing was invented by Silicon Valley startups that needed to find innovative ways to reach exponential growth. It’s how Facebook, Airbnb, Uber and others keep innovating and creating value to their customers at lightning speed.

You can use the same principles to discover a unique tactic that will boost your conversion rates in record time. Just follow these five steps:

1. Set your Conversion Rate goals

To set the right Conversion Rate goal for your company, you need to know if your target is possible or out of your reach. Find out the conversion rate benchmark for the top stores in your segment and set a challenging but achievable conversion target. You can calculate and benchmark your conversion rate by creating a free Compass account

2. Brainstorm and prioritize ideas

Set up a time with your team or by yourself to brainstorm thirty ideas that could potentially boost your Conversion Rate, from the modest and simple to the crazy and infeasible. Then categorize them into ideas that:

Are already working for you

Will probably work

Are possible, but not probable

3. Create a hypothesis and test your best ideas

Now get the list of your probable ideas, create a testable hypothesis and create experiments to test them. Use your creativity to find the easiest, cheapest ways to create experiments and find out which of these ideas are most likely to work for you.

This is called rapid prototyping and it’s the easiest way to test as many ideas as possible, cheaply. A great (and free) tool to help you test different ideas is Google Optimize. It makes it easy to create and analyze your tests without much technical knowledge.

4. Analyze results, learn and implement

Chances are, most of your experiments won’t bring the results you wanted, but that’s OK. The important thing is to analyze the results of the tests, summarize your learnings, create new hypotheses based on these learnings and create new experiments to test them.

Each experiment will give you a bunch of new insights and ideas to test. If the experiments bring good results, even better. Simply move on to the next experiment idea.

5. Re-evaluate weekly

Run a meeting at the beginning of every week to evaluate your numbers. Start by reading Compass’s dashboard to see if your conversion rates improve compared to the previous week.

And make sure to take some time to think about your testing process. How can you improve it? What tools do you need to help you better run and analyze your tests? What new tests are you going to launch this week?

High Tempo Testing is a management style that focuses on the amount of tests you do each week. The more tests you run, the more you’ll learn about your conversion rates and your customers, which will lead to better and more sophisticated tests and better results. Work on it diligently and you’re guaranteed to see your numbers improve.

A List of 88 Ideas to Improve Your Conversion Rates

It’s hard to come up with unique ideas right off the bat. So to help you get into the habit of High Tempo Testing, here’s a list of test to try.If they work, great. If not, you can learn from them and come up with your own ideas.

Moreover, you’ll see that some of them, such as “Add personality to your copy,” are subjective. They will require a personalized approach. You can even test different “types of personalities” and see which one sticks. The possibilities are endless.

Test different prices

Personalized product recommendations

Add customer testimonials

Add Reviews

Use social media proof

Offer a free ebook

Add a rewards program for referring a friend

Add a Bounce Exchange (or similar) pop up

Add logos of media outlets you’ve been featured in

Use quotes from researchers, doctors or other authority figures

Add personality to your copy, like DollarShaveClub

Do limited-time-only sales

Add a 24-hour real-time clock showcasing a discount or sale

Show people how many units of a product are left in stock

Test button sizes, colors, call-to-action copy

Test headlines: Make sure they’re benefit-driven

Offer discount coupons

Add upselling and cross-selling

Add an exit intent popup at checkout

Create giveaways and competitions

Offer ways to create wishlists

Add website search

Display product categories

Add an About page

Add guest checkout

Show all payment options in footer and in checkout page

Internationalize your business

Use a heatmap to see where your visitors are dropping off

Test remarketing

Try live chat

Eliminate distractions at checkout

Add videos to product pages

Add video to the homepage

Add customer support via SMS

Add breadcrumbs

Add detailed, clear product descriptions

Have professional quality photos

State availability, shipping terms and delivery times

Use security / trust badges

Reduce number of steps in checkout process

Start a blog

Start a newsletter

Capture user sessions with Hotjar

Nail your unique selling proposition

Provide sub-newsletters based on interest

Offer daily deals

Offer discounts to subscribers

Offer free shipping to subscribers

Make sure there is a direct correlation between your ads and your landing page

Add a local phone number

Do onsite retargeting

Write in your audience’s language

Invest in Long Tail SEO

Reduce clutter in design

Design every page for just one purpose

Keep the best content above the fold

Start a loyalty program

Reduce the number of fields in forms (especially mobile forms)

Browser push notification

Set up a funnel in Google Analytics

Generate email leads

Survey your most satisfied users

Survey your least satisfied users

Color is important. Sometimes a simple color change may affect the conversion.

Increase the size of your add-to-cart buttons

Start an affiliate program

Use top bar CTAs, such as Hello Bar

Ensure that product pages overcome as many buyer objections as possible

Ramon is a Content Marketing Manager at Compass. He has ten years of experience using data to find opportunities for sustainable and profitable growth. He’s worked for online companies of various sizes, from startups to multi-million dollar businesses. In his last company, TourRadar, he helped raise revenues from $500k to $1.2M in under a year.

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